Subcommittee to markup commonsense Clean Air Act bills

Tomorrow, the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Environment Subcommittee is scheduled to hold a markup of several Clean Air Act-related bills.

NAAQS refers to the standards that the EPA sets for six principal air pollutants known as the criteria air pollutants: carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ground-level ozone, particular matter, and sulfur dioxide.

There is a need for major reforms to the NAAQS process, something which is discussed in detail in CEI’s Modernizing the EPA: A Blueprint for Congress. The Blueprint provides important background on NAAQS, including the need for reform and the current state of the nation’s air quality. The nation’s air quality is incredibly clean and some of the best in the world.

When it comes to fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5 and a pollutant that gets a lot of attention, the U.S. is far cleaner than most countries, including almost all the EU nations. The nation’s air quality is so good that it is very difficult to find ways to make it cleaner, and some areas may even be at background levels for certain pollutants. Here are some of the bills:

CLEAR Act (H.R. 4218)

– Currently under the NAAQS process, the EPA is required to review, and if appropriate revise, the standards every five years. This bill would extend the time-period to 10 years.

Given the massive costs and marginal benefits of stricter standards, the EPA shouldn’t be setting new standards anymore. If there were a need for new federal standards, Congress can and should make such decisions. It is also worth noting that states can already impose stricter standards than those set by the EPA.

At a minimum, the EPA shouldn’t be able to set new standards until at least 75 percent of the country’s population is living in areas already meeting the standards.

Having said this, the 10-year time frame would be an improvement, something that CEI has suggested as a very modest reform.

– The bill would allow the EPA administrator to consider, as a secondary consideration when setting a standard, the likely attainability of the standard. Such a consideration, along with consideration of all adverse effects, should be part of the standard-setting process. However, this commonsense reform, which only focuses on attainment, is helpful.

 – Under the bill, states would be less likely to get punished for exceptional events affecting air quality or for actions that mitigate wildfire risk.

In general, the bill’s sponsor Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA), should be commended for developing a thoughtful NAAQS reform bill that covers multiple issues.

FIRE Act (H.R. 6387)

This bill would ensure that areas are not penalized by unfairly including emissions from prescribed burns in determining attainment. My colleague Jacob Tomasulo has explained:

Congress needs to take action to ensure that, codified within the CAA, states are not unfairly penalized for prescribed burns. Disincentivizing their use can undermine forest management. And ironically, penalizing the use of prescribed burns can hurt air quality, which undermines the purpose of the CAA.

FENCES Act (H.R. 6409)
 
This bill would expressly exclude foreign emissions from being considered in determining attainment.

New Source Review Permitting Improvement Act (H.R. 161)

This is what I wrote about the bill a few months ago:

[This bill] would help to address the following issue described in the hearing memo:

Owners and operators of existing sources seeking to install modern pollution control equipment or improve the efficiency of their operations, which may reduce overall emission[s], may nonetheless trigger NSR [New Source Review] permitting requirements, discouraging environmental improvements.

This is an absurd outcome that undermines environmental objectives. H.R. 161 would amend the definition of “modification” in various sections of the Clean Air Act “to clarify that certain activities that do not increase emissions do not trigger NSR permitting.”

Conclusion

It is nice to see that NAAQS reform is on the radar screen of lawmakers. While they need to go much further than what has been proposed in the bills to be marked up tomorrow, these bills are an important start.